Scripture: Luke 2:22-35; Psalm 69:1-3; Psalm 88:13-18; Psalm 22:1 Series: 2021
Preached on December 26, 2021, this sermon on Luke 2:22-35 reflects on Simeon, who waited his whole life to see the Lord’s Christ. Drawing on sports fandom, Formula 1’s unjust endings, and the contrast between good and bad story endings, Pruitt frames much of life as feeling like a blowout rather than a close game. Through the laments of Psalms 69 and 88, and Jesus quoting Psalm 22 from the cross, he argues that God in Christ stands inside our pain rather than hurling help from safety above. Like Simeon, we can receive God’s salvation now even amid brokenness, knowing Christ has already won, and step into the arena with him by loving enemies and daring greatly in the new year.
Illustrations: bowl-games-championship-fandom, astros-world-series-loss, formula-1-drive-to-survive, schumacher-last-race-trickery, verstappen-hamilton-last-lap, man-in-the-arena, lost-versus-good-endings, father-delayed-gratification, sound-of-silence-darkness, sonderegger-christ-in-the-pit
December 26
When the time came for their ritual cleansing, in accordance with the Law from Moses, they brought Jesus up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. (It’s written in the Law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male will be dedicated to the Lord.”) They offered a sacrifice in keeping with what’s stated in the Law of the Lord, A pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons. A man named Simeon was in Jerusalem. He was righteous and devout. He eagerly anticipated the restoration of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. The Holy Spirit revealed to him that he wouldn’t die before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. Led by the Spirit, he went into the temple area. Meanwhile, Jesus’ parents brought the child to the temple so that they could do what was customary under the Law. Simeon took Jesus in his arms and praised God. He said, “Now, master, let your servant go in peace according to your word, because my eyes have seen your salvation. You prepared this salvation in the presence of all peoples. It’s a light for revelation to the Gentiles and a glory for your people Israel.” His father and mother were amazed by what was said about him. Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “This boy is assigned to be the cause of the falling and rising of many in Israel and to be a sign that generates opposition so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your innermost being too.” Luke 2:22-35
We are in the Bowl season of college football. We are getting close to the playoffs in professional football. When I was in college and growing up, I wasn’t a big fan of bowl games. I thought it was either get your chip, get your championship, or it was not a great season. I grew up in College Station with these solid RC Slocum Aggie teams that were always competitive, but never fantastic. Then at UT, we had Vince Young and our one shining moment. We had some solid basketball teams some College World Series trips, but the year was only seen as a success if we won a national championship.
I’ve really mellowed a lot as I’ve gotten older in that championships are a lot less important to me. I want to have fun. Bowl games are fun. I’ve been to a lot of Alamo bowls. They’re fun. They’re easy to get to. San Antonio is a great town. It’s nice. During some seasons of college football, everyone knows who is going to win at the beginning of the year. Some years are more predictable than others. There are some games that you know from the very beginning that they are going to be close, others, you know are going to be blow outs. You know that it’s not going to happen. After the first few games of the world series this past year, I knew the Astros weren’t going to win. Yordan Alvarez was not hitting well. And that was it. The only issue was how long until the suffering would stop. For too much of my life, I invested too much of my identity in a sport played by millionaires whom I had never met. I was tired of caring so much.
It was about that time that I got into Formula 1 racing. I’d never really gotten into cars or auto racing of any kind but then I watched the Netflix series Drive to Survive, and I was hooked. It was interesting on a competition level, a personality level, an engineering level, and a cosmopolitan world-traversing level.
Formula 1 has this points system where you get 25 points per win, 18 for second place, and so on up until 10th place. And so that’s what it means when someone says you are in the points. If you’re lower than 10th, you don’t get any points. Therefore, you know, if your car is falling apart, just stop. It doesn’t matter. Like the difference between 11th of 20th is nothing. There’s no difference. There have been years in Formula 1 when trickery has happened on the last race to let someone win. It happened in 1994 with Michael Schumacher and the Benetton team. This was the same year when Aylton Senna died in a crash driving for Williams. Damien Hill was the other driver for Williams. And he just came on strong and turned things around but it didn’t matter. On the last day, Schumacher knocked him out of the race. The same thing almost happened again in 1997 when Schumacher crashed into Jacques Villeneuve on the last day of the race, but Villeneuve was able to finish and Schumacher was disqualified. Those wins leave a bad taste in the mouth. This past year in Formula 1, the title was decided on the last lap of the last race thanks to the race director changing the rules at the last minute to let passed cars overtake the safety car and Max Verstappen was then able to overtake Lewis Hamilton on fresher tires. It is unjust and unfair.
It is one thing to be on the sidelines. It is another to play in the big game. Athletes I know love the Teddy Roosevelt speech he gave in 1913 that is often subtitled, “The Man in the Arena,”
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
It is one thing to watch the game. Another to play it. To live it. To win or lose together.
Whether we play or watch, there are differences between a good ending and a bad ending. In sports and in movies and books, there is a differences between a good ending and bad ending. There are movies that are great all the way through. And then, at the very end, the story is sloppy and you walk away with a bad taste. The TV show, Lost, started off strong. The end wasn’t there because there really wasn’t any substance to begin with. They were making it up as they go along. Whereas, in movies like The Usual Suspects or Knives Out or a good mystery where the end actually makes all of it make sense, the whole of the story is so much better. Friends, this is not a series today, but a sermon on endings. This is a sermon on saying goodbye. We don’t know much about Simeon. Other than this moment, we don’t know who he was. There’s no record of Simeon outside of the Gospel of Luke. He is an older man, a holy man. He was waiting for something. Simeon is waiting. He’s waiting for the Messiah. He has been waiting his whole life for the anointed one of God to come. More than that, he’s waiting for what his fathers and his grandfather’s and his father’s father’s fathers have been waiting for: God’s promise fulfilled. And in a lot of that waiting, it does not seem like a close game. It does not look like the good guys are going to win. The life of the Hebrew people looks like a blowout. Honestly, a lot of life seems like a blow out. There are a lot of moments in life that don’t seem like close games. When someone you love is dying, it doesn’t seem like a close game. When someone you love has changed in such a way that they no longer act the same or treat you like they used to, it does not seem like close game.
We may think or prayer to God, “Okay if you were so great, God, if you are so wonderful, why can’t you just save us right now? Why the trickery, why the mystery, just save us?”
How long, oh Lord? This is not a stupid question.
My father would often talk of how the mark of maturity is found in delayed gratification. Instant gratification is the mark of a child. I want it all. I want it all. And I want it now. It is one thing to seek gratification from a position of comfort. It is another to seek comfort from a position of pain and longing.
How long, O Lord?
The Psalms are filled with questions like this.
Save me, God, because the waters have reached my neck! I have sunk into deep mud. My feet can’t touch the bottom! I have entered deep water; the flood has swept me up. I am tired of crying. My throat is hoarse. My eyes are exhausted with waiting for my God. (Psalm 69-14)
It does not seem like a close game for the Psalmist. It feels more like a blowout. Or Psalm 88
But I cry out to you, Lord! My prayer meets you first thing in the morning! Why do you reject my very being, Lord? Why do you hide your face from me? Since I was young I’ve been afflicted, I’ve been dying. I’ve endured your terrors. I’m lifeless. Your fiery anger has overwhelmed me; your terrors have destroyed me. They surround me all day long like water; they engulf me completely. You’ve made my loved ones and companions distant. My only friend is darkness.. (Psalm 88:13-18)
This is the end of Psalm 88. It is the only Psalm with such a sad ending. This is where the Simon and Garfunkel song comes from
Hello Darkness my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again.
How long O Lord?
And yet what if God has heard our cry? What if God, in fact, is also crying out? What if the words of the Psalmist are the words of the Lord? From the cross, Jesus quotes the words of Psalm 22, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Christ in speaking those words becomes the speaker of the words. The Psalms of lament cease to be a dialogue between humans and God and become the words of Jesus to the Father for us. Jesus stands in solidarity with us: with our pain, with our doubt, with our worry. As Katherine Sonderegger said, “Christ bears this burden, not His own, until the end, the last end of sinners…He becomes the lost, so powerfully evoked in Psalm 88…In this, the darkest of laments, the psalmist never directly proclaims the LOrd’s consolation…This is what the Lord of the covenant assumes for his very own: the darkest pitch of grief.”
She goes on, “It matters to the suffering that the helper does not stand far from danger, merely hurling a line down into the pit from perfect safety above. It matters that this Helper has tasted the bitter gall. He, the Lord, is not outside but rather inside the “problem of pain,” inside the suffering that is unrelieved and without consolation…Even in the pit, the forgotten and erased, even and especially there, this Incarnate One is Eternal Life even in death.”
When Simeon announces, “Lord now your servant may go in peace,” he sees that God is with us in this child. God is with us from the heights of joy to the depths of sorrow. God never says that story is too sad. God never denies the pain of others because God stood in that pain for us and said, “no more.” God stood in that death for us and said, “not again.”
How long O Lord?
Our redemption has been won through Jesus. Simeon understood it even as the old world still stood. We can understand it today, even when the brokenness around us still stands.
We can still pray as the Psalmist yearning for a savior, but we must be willing to realize that our salvation has come. God has come. And our salvation may not look how we want it to. It may not look like the world would look if we were in charge.
And yet this is an ending worth seeking. The odds seem against us at first, but the truth is that Christ has already won. We know what happens at the end of the game. We checked the score. Even still, we don’t have to passively watch it play out. We can be a part of Christ’s victory. We can be in the arena with Christ. We can dare greatly with Christ and with each other.
May you see in Christ that God is with us. May you see in Christ that you have not waited in vain. May you step into the arena with Christ and be a part of God’s victory by loving your enemies, praying for those who persecute you, and stepping outside of your comfort zone this day and in this new year.
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, forgive us for the times that we have given up our wait. Forgive us for the times we have distracted ourselves from thinking of you. Help us to have the patience of Simeon to rejoice in your coming, to receive your peace, and join you in the arena of this world, where your victory is assured. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.